special man, special camera

Frank Hor­vat made a cou­ple of inter­est­ing inter­views with well known col­leagues about their prac­tice, motives and ideas. One of the most funny ones he made with the then 61 years old Mario Gia­comelli in 1987. Gia­comelli did a great act by pre­tend­ing that he “invented” his own cam­era and at the same time he doesn’t care about the mechan­i­cal aspects of it. I have included an excerpt from this interview:

Frank Hor­vat : What about the cam­era? It seems that you don’t have the same cam­era as every­one else, a Leica, a Nikon or a Kodak.
Mario Gia­comelli : I don’t know about other people’s cam­eras. Mine is a thing I had cob­bled up, it holds together with tape and is always los­ing parts. All I need to set is the dis­tance and that other thing — what do you call that other thing? I’m not a fan of mechan­ics. I have had this cam­era, still the same one, since I started tak­ing pho­tos. It has lived with me, shared many moments of my exis­tence, both good and bad. If I ever lost it… well, the very idea of hav­ing to live with­out it pulls at my heart.
Frank Hor­vat : But where does it come from?
Mario Gia­comelli : I had it made. By dis­man­tling a cam­era given to me by a friend and remov­ing what­ever seemed use­less. I only need dis­tance and that other thing — what’s that other thing called again? I don’t know how these machines work, what counts is that light shouldn’t get in. It’s just a box.
Frank Hor­vat : And what film do you use?
Mario Gia­comelli : What­ever I get. Frank Hor­vat : 24 by 36 mil­lime­ters? Mario Gia­comelli : Don’t ask me about mil­lime­ters! I use the larger film, not the smaller one. I’ve never used the smaller one. Frank Hor­vat : So, six by six cen­time­ters? Mario Gia­comelli : Don’t talk to me about fig­ures! I only know that six by nine becomes six by eight and a half. Frank Hor­vat : So you get12 pho­tos per roll? Mario Gia­comelli : I can’t remem­ber, but I think it’s more like ten. Ten, not twelve. What’s impor­tant is that there shouldn’t be too many. Once I won a com­pe­ti­tion and was given a small size cam­era as a prize. But I didn’t know how to use it, it was too fast for me, it didn’t par­tic­i­pate as my own cam­era does, it left me no time to think, made me press the shut­ter for noth­ing. I felt deprived of what makes my great­est joy, which is the wait­ing, the prepar­ing of the image, the wind­ing of the film, the replac­ing of the roll. My own cam­era is exactly what I need, it suits my char­ac­ter. Frank Hor­vat : At what speed does it work? a thir­ti­eth, a hun­dredth of a sec­ond? Mario Gia­comelli : I don’t know any more. It doesn’t go over two hun­dred. To pho­to­graph from a plane I have to bor­row a friend’s cam­era, I’m a lit­tle ashamed to admit it, but I don’t care. It doesn’t mat­ter to me, I would take pho­tos with­out a cam­era if I could. I’ve no great pas­sion for mechan­ics. Frank Hor­vat : And what’s the lens aper­ture? Mario Gia­comelli : It depends. At Scanno, I did nearly every­thing at a 25th. For land­scapes I use 2 and 22. Frank Hor­vat : Half a sec­ond at aper­ture 22? Mario Gia­comelli : I know there is a 2 and a 22, that’s the aper­ture of the lens, I learnt it by heart. Frank Hor­vat : So you close the aper­ture all the way. Mario Gia­comelli : All the way, always the same. Because it’s for land­scapes. When it’s for peo­ple, and there is not much light, I do the oppo­site: I open the lens.(The inter­view was trans­lated into Eng­lish by Julia Mclaren)

Mario Gia­comelli must have known very well what kind of cam­era he had (bought). There were only around 400 of this spe­cial cam­era made by Boni­forti & Bal­le­rio in Milano. The “Kobell Film”, first released in 1955 didn’t have the cur­tain shut­ter of its pre­de­ces­sor, but was made for 120 and 220 roll film. It was capa­ble to shoot 10 frames on 120 roll film (or up to 21 on 220 film) in the for­mat 6 x 7 (pre­cisely 5.4 x 7,2 cm). With auto­matic counter, cou­pled rangefinder, inter­change­able (Ger­man) lenses in syn­chro­nized shut­ters from 65 to 360 mm and with addi­tional par­al­lax cor­rected viewfind­ers, you can call the cam­era bet­ter an advanced piece of well build tech­ni­cal equip­ment, than a “left-over” that had to be stripped of “unnec­es­sary things”. I haven’t seen any price list from that time with this cam­era on it, but I assume that it wasn’t cheap either. But for Gia­comelli the invest­ment has paid off, if you see the amount and qual­ity of his oeu­vre.

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Leave it to Anouk Kruithof to cel­e­brate the inde­pen­dent, the adven­tur­ous and the irrev­er­ent spirit of self pub­lish­ers of photo books. Sub­mis­sions are free, the jury is sharp and the rewards are gen­er­ous. Go see for your­self! … See MoreSee Less

“The Eagle-Eye Photo Con­test: Land­scapes of Sur­veil­lance is a con­test like no other. Instead of pretty land­scapes, we call on pho­tog­ra­phers, artists and the gen­eral pub­lic to explore and pho­tog­ra­phy the land­scapes of sur­veil­lance in con­tem­po­rary Ger­many. From Amer­i­can NSA and Ger­man BND bases in our midst to the secret spy gear on US Embassies and Con­sulates, the Eagle-Eye Photo Con­test will focus on the land­scapes of sur­veil­lance that are all around us. The win­ners’ pho­tographs will be pre­sented at the Frank­furter Kun­stverein along­side artist Trevor Paglen’s upcom­ing exhi­bi­tion “The Octo­pus” from June 20th to August 30th, 2015 and be pub­lished in the Jour­nal Frank­furt.“

It’s #DataRush hour world­wide: Amnesty Inter­na­tional just launched a global cam­paign against the mass mon­i­tor­ing of your inter­net and phone com­mu­ni­ca­tions and unchecked intru­sions on your pri­vacy, even if you are NOT a US cit­i­zen.

The ter­ri­to­r­ial dis­pute over who has a say over the inter­net con­tin­ues.

The United States’ mass sur­veil­lance of inter­net and phone use flies in the face of global pub­lic opin­ion, said Amnesty Inter­na­tional as it pub­lished a major poll to launch its world­wide #Unfol­lowMe campaign.

“Spy­ing, espe­cially domes­tic spy­ing, is an aspect of what the Santa Fe Insti­tute econ­o­mist Samuel Bowles calls guard labour: work that is done to sta­bilise prop­erty rela­tion­ships, espe­cially the prop­erty belong­ing to the rich.

The amount a state needs to expend on guard labour is a func­tion of how much legit­i­macy the state holds in its population’s reck­on­ing. A state whose pop­u­la­tion mainly views the sys­tem as fair needs to do less coer­cion to attain sta­bil­ity. Peo­ple who believe that they are well-served by the sta­tus quo will not work to upset it. States whose pop­u­la­tions view the sys­tem as ille­git­i­mate need to spend more on guard labour.“